I have definitive knowledge that at least in navigating rivers in Idaho, it is safer to use a Whitewater Raft as opposed to a Whitewater Canoe. However, the later is more of a blast! Today’s painting is really duller then this picture shows. It really is a muted scene, just poor lighting when I took the photo.

OK, expaination is in order. “Eat it, Hud, Eat it!” is a quote from the Jim Rome Radio Show. Rex Hudler [sp?] was a baseball player that once ate a beautiful bug at his fellow baseball players request. He ate the bug, and they won the game. It was a rally moment. Sometimes, one has to do the strange to encourage one’s comrades to their goal.

Does this explain why I finally performed some sort of study on an Edvard Munch painting? OK, you know this is my favorite painting in the world. But do you realize that this is both a still life and a portrait? My interpretation, is an interupted piece. Originally, I was to sketch the painting, then base a landscape on the composition. You can see this if you notice that the value of the wall is very light compared to the original by Munch. There are spiritual and educative reasons why I was going to do this. But since I had to go to work. This is the final version of this study, hence the name S1.

I intend to revisit studying this work several times in the next several years. The reason, is I need to understand why this painting enlightened me so.

Details of good news is coming for you and I. This time I will not “Shoot the Messenger”. Quite frankly, there is a possibility that my paintings will be involved with 3 or 4 shows in the next 6 months. The best of the news involves the Basement Gallery, in downtown Boise. I will post on this later.

But for now… I have determined the greatest fans of these paintings you have seen are in Kansas City! Thank-you Kansas City, Portland, Boise, Los Angelas, San Francisco, London, New York [specifically Manhattan the heart of the art world], Madison, and Chicago…. This is not a race….

However I love the dichotomy of the center [heart] of the country [Kansas] being just as often visitors to this site as the heart of the Art World [Manhattan]. FYI, their is in Kansas a mildly large city called… Manhattan.

Eat at the Munch Exhibit

About dichotomies, the Edvard Munch exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago should be great to visit. I would like to encourage anybody who has the where with all to visit it, to do so. I myself have not the where with all, but will probably acquire the book on it. I enjoy studying Edvard Munch’s stuff… but as of yet have not done any real paintings that are studies of it. Maybe some day.

The reason for the interest is that Munch’s Painting “The Day After” is my favorite painting in the world. Mr. Phelps my high school history teacher for Western Civilization introduced me to this. It is the first painting that actually got me excited about art. It is shown below.

None of us will ever see the original that Munch painted, because it was destroyed. The above is a “Post Study” Munch did of the original. I have had to good luck to see the Intagilio Print of this at the Munch Museum in Oslo.

Dagny Juel was probably the model. She was the model for Munch’s Madonna. Both were originally exhibited in Germany together with Munch’s Ashes. It would be Munch-like to use the same model. It implies a huge break from the sanctity of holiness… Madonna in a bedroom scene. Perhaps this indiscretion is why the exhibit was banned, and Munch became famous. What a genious.

Probably the greatest photographer ever, was Ansel Adams. Apparantly our Boise Art Museum has an Exhibit of Several of his Photos. I should go. What I have learned this week is that Andrew Wyeth was really an abstract painter, in terms of his design of composition. Perhaps Ansel Adams was as well. The photo this painting is based off of looks like an abstract design. So I should research it more.

Have you noticed I am using acrylics more in my paintings. This is to get me used to the more “electric” modern pigments, and it is a challenge to paint with such a loaded gun.

Owyhee county in Idaho, is high desert. Owyhee is Paiute for “Hawaii”. As I have mentioned before, Idaho and Hawaii are joined at the hip.

This painting is a definitivly high contrast desert washout scene that is typical this time of year in the Idaho High Desert. Often times, when you want to get somewhere you have to drive through washouts. Can you say, adrenaline rush, especially on a motorcycle?

BTW, if you did not get my joke yet… I purposely over bleached the desert flats to match the name of the painting… washout. Just so you know, the sun does get this bright in the desert. So much so, that you can become “sand blind” as well as “snow blind”.

My mentor would like to thank the lady from Hailey, Idaho who purchased the original of this painting from Idaho’s PBS channel 4, as a fund raiser. My interpretation is nothing like the original though. It uses a real wack-job of a palette. Another “Electric Earth” palette. If anyone else wants to use this palette, I warn you that it is playing with fire. Do you feel lucky? Halfway through I concluded that my cool yellow was warmer than my warm yellow, so I swapped them in some of my mixes.

In order to traverse the long lonely desert roads to get to this washout, and then to drive through it my former roomate, Shane Smith recommends a Kawasaki KLR 650 motorcycle. He as always a Honda XR 650 fan, but he has met many people who prefer the KLR as their “Desert Rat” cycle…

Usually when I revisit a motif, I find frustration in my concentration. You learn something about yourself when doing a post study. In this case I feel the painting has better composition.

Spring is coming and the Mores Creek that once was my nemesis in canoeing, will flood with spring runoff. That is when the dead of winter changes and life comes back to the valley. Imagine that, loads of water washing out a valley, brings a renewed life. I guess our sins just get washed down the river of life.